Alejandro Cervantes-Carson

Luis Echeverría, the president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976, was serving as interior minister when the massacre of student demonstrators took place at Tlatelolco in 1968. Under the presidency of Vincente Fox (2000-2006), an enquiry was launched into the cover-up of the massacre by Echeverría and the subsequent president José Lopez-Portillo (1976-1982). Here, sociologist Alejandro Cervantes-Carson describes his efforts to obtain an interview with the man his generation grew up thinking of as “the embodiment of political evil”. The bureaucratic hurdles he encountered led him to reflect on the processes by which political crime can be both overlooked and brought to justice.